Kings Hardly Goal-Oriented

The Kings discovered a new problem Wednesday, adding to their vast collection as they try to find a way to stay in the playoff race.

Now they can’t seem to find the net.

The Kings whiffed and waned in a 1-0 loss to the Vancouver Canucks, losing their fifth consecutive game in a continually unraveling playoff drive before a crowd of 18,630 at General Motors Place.

The Kings had gone 32 games without being shut out, but offensive ineptitude is the norm these days for the Kings, who have scored four goals over their last three games -- two goals, then one goal and now no goals.

It’s difficult for a team to score when it doesn’t shoot, and the Kings set a season-low with 15 shots Wednesday.

Worse, the out-of-town scoreboard provided no relief: The Edmonton Oilers picked up a point in a 4-3 overtime loss to the Dallas Stars, another step of separation for them from the 10th-place Kings.

The Kings are now four points behind the seventh-place Oilers and three behind the eighth-place Nashville Predators for the final two playoff spots in the Western Conference. The Kings have six games left, including Friday at Edmonton.

“Obviously we didn’t score any goals, so it’s difficult to get any points,” King Coach Andy Murray said. “You try to put the players in situations where they have an opportunity to score and we had a couple of those tonight and didn’t capitalize.”

If the Kings felt a sense of urgency, they didn’t show it in the first 30 minutes. The Kings did little more than skate laps from one end to the other, getting outshot at one point, 22-4.

“That hasn’t happened to us in a long time,” defenseman Mattias Norstrom said. “There’s no excuse why we’re not ready at the start of the game.”

The Kings finally started to get some chances, but none were good enough to be difference-makers.

Trent Klatt hit the right post midway through the second period. Martin Straka skidded a shot from the side that went behind goaltender Dan Cloutier later in the period. Anson Carter couldn’t convert an abbreviated breakaway off an interception in the Canuck zone early in the third period.

And with 45 seconds left, with Cristobal Huet pulled for an extra attacker, Luc Robitaille had one last chance to send the game to overtime. But Robitaille’s clean one-timer from the slot glanced off Vancouver forward Artem Chubarov and never made it to Cloutier.

“The puck was rolling because the ice was so bad, so I just wanted to make sure I hit the net,” Robitaille said. “It just nicked the guy’s pad. Can’t get a break. Any other night, it nicks a guy’s pad and goes in the net. It didn’t tonight.”

Matt Cooke, a grinder who had been promoted to Vancouver’s top line before the game, gave the Canucks all they would need at 9:19 of the first period. The play began when Markus Naslund found Marek Malik alone in the slot. Malik drew Huet out and fed Cooke across the crease for an easy tap-in.

Murray called for an unusually early timeout after the goal.

“They were playing harder than we were playing,” he said. “There’s no sense waiting to use your timeout in the last minute if you don’t take care of things in the first part of the game.”

Cloutier picked up his fifth shutout of the season and did his best to right a team that had been in a 2-5-3-1 slump.

The Kings now must make their last six games their best.

“If it was like a seven-game series coming into tonight, now it’s like a one-game series,” forward Sean Avery said. “We can’t lose any of these games.”